Last night, the most talked-about television series of the past decade ended. Tonight, we dedicate an episode of The Geekbox to discussing, dismantling, and reflecting on Lost’s finale and everything that led up to it. I imagine, as with the Lost finale itself, you will either love or hate this episode. Hopefully you find our nutty discourse entertaining as always. 🙂

I couldn’t help but think of the Quantum Leap finale after Lost was over, and just how much better QL handled it. It still had a melancholy tone to it, with enough openness for interpretation, but still felt completely satisfying. Lost, sadly, did not.

I don’t want a story that reflects the unanswerable questions of life, I want a finale that feels like a bookend. It doesn’t necessarily have to answer every minute detail, but give the characters (that we all love) some sense of respect and closure. The only characters that saw anything resembling a story arc were Jack, and anyone that died on island, the rest are just sort of hanging there.

Dollars to donuts the original concept for the show was that the island WAS purgatory, but Lindelof/Cuse decided they needed to come up with something else because the internets were getting too close to the truth. That’s what the finale felt like to me, the producers gasping at any straw to appear clever, creative, and smarter than all the rest. I loved the finale, up until that last ten minutes, then all I could think was, “Oh shit, they’re not really going to do this? Are they?”.

Tell me that, if the producers had just refused to respond to theories from the beginning, and the island had been purgatory, that the finale wouldn’t have taken very little tweaking to come to the very same (and I’d wager more satisfying) conclusion? Lost’s finale felt a whole lot like Bobby Ewing in a shower to me.

Oh my god, Higgins was beyond obnoxious. I mean, I usually don’t mind the guy, but I don’t know how even he will be able to listen to this podcast again in a year’s time.

“You like FFXIII, don’t you? Heeeh heh heeeh”

I mean, really. That’s your defence, attacking the dude’s character via video game taste? Really? Life doesn’t give you all the answers, so therefore Higgins becomes a scientologist. First year uni philosophy. Deep.

Now that that’s off my chest, I actually usually like the podcast. Keep it up. =p

“Daniel Faraday conducted a payload experiment demonstrating a time delay of objects traveling to the Island. Later Ray’s body washed up on shore at the beach apparently at a time before his own death, which suggests the time discrepancy between the Island and the rest of the world is variable in nature. This may explain why no aircraft were observed at the time of the Swan’s resupply drop.”

Higgins needs to calm down and let other people talk. I was interested in hearing about what plot holes exist, it would have been an interesting change of pace instead of talking about how he’s had some sort of spiritual awakening.

I don’t want to be insulting, but after over an hour of your ranting I feel entitled to say it. You’re grasping at straws. You spam out irrational theories in the mad hope that one of them will be right and people will think you’re smart. This is what I had in my head the entire podcast:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-agl0pOQfs

I enjoyed the show for what it was, but I can’t stand how forgiving people are with these writers. Are there plot holes? Yes. Are they to be expected in an American tv production? Yeah, most networks won’t commit to a set schedule for a series. But what makes them worth pointing out, and criticizing, is that the writers have been so smug this entire time. I can’t recall the exact quote, but I remember them saying that there would be a rational (or possibly even scientific) explanation for everything on the island. Somehow rational includes ghosts, magic, time travel and religion… but whatever. If they had a grand plan for the overarching story, they threw it away by the time a second season was confirmed.

I think the original plan was that the island was purgatory or some other nondenominational equivalent, but they got extended and saw that people had figured them out so they abandoned that idea. The elements they salvaged of that theme for the actual finale feel a bit out of place. Are we supposed to believe that this land of monsters, miracle healing, ghosts and time travel is real, yet the normal world in the flash sideways is the construct of some higher power?

Lost fanboys are the worst of any part of modern culture (looking right at you Ryan Scott). For the past 5 1/2 years as the questions started to mount all you fanboys would say is “Just wait Damon and Carlton will show you the answers and you will be blown away! Have faith!”

However, around the midpoint of the final season, when it became apparent that most of the major storylines would NOT be revisited, the fanboy mantra changed. Ive heard it from the likes of Ryan Scott, Jeff Jensen, Jay and Jack, The Transmission, etc: “Who cares that they are not going to answer anything! I’m just in it for the ride!”

I just love these tards who, two days later, still insist upon foisting their “I hate lost” bullcrap on everyone else. Must have made an awesome impact – that they care so much about it even though they never watched it.

THANK YOU for getting the show posted on Tuesdays for the entire final season of Lost! It was probably a huge pain, but it made a big difference. I’m the only Lost nerd I know (my wife watches it with me, if that’s even possible while she’s constantly eye-rolling), so it was nice to hear you all rehash the episodes every week.

Feel free to procrastinate and post on like Friday from now on, like in the Geekbox olden days. You earned it and I don’t watch Burn Notice anyway, heh.

Thank you for validating my decision to never ‘get into’ Lost.
I watched one or two episodes of the first season and thought it was boring.
Then when so many people who called themselves ‘geeks’ started raving about it I re-considered watching the show.
Most of the discussion surrounding the show was about all of these great mysteries.
I KNEW, somehow, that they would cop out of answering all of these questions.
I can’t imagine anything more tedious than watching 6 whole seasons of a show centered around mysteries and having the answer to all of these questions be “Well there is this vague spirituality and everything is all mystical, so there you go”.
It sounds to me like Higgins is just making excuses for the show because he had invested so much time and effort into it that to admit that it was as waste of time would somehow reflect badly on him.
If I want some vague, silly mysticism I would go to church.
What I don’t get is why so many “geeks” thought this show was so great. Most geeks I know are rational people who don’t usually use ‘vague mysticism’ as a valid explanation for things.
“You don’t get all the answers in life” possibly true, but Lost isn’t life, its a show. And shows are supposed to have plots.
A good mystery will usually explain what happened or at least give you the tools to figure it out for yourself.
The only thing ‘Spirituality’ answers is ‘I don’t like church, yet I still want some neat and tidy way to answer all of the unexplained things that happen’.

My answer for the final image of the plan wreckage is that if you remember back to season 1 the beach was eroding and most of the plane wreckage went into the ocean. At the end the island was falling apart and jack restarted it and all the damage to the island was fixed and the island rose up and reset it self. There for the wreckage was back on the beach. Basically implying all the stuff on the island is safe and back to normal. Might be a stretch, but I honestly can’t think of anything else.

Right on Higgins. There is no right or wrong with ending beyond the fact that they are dead and have met in this “place”. Karen is getting specific and demanding her version of the place is right, when a specific answer isn’t the point. A christian person would explain it one way, hindu another, atheist another. Having it be Jacks purgatory is a good explanation, Karen’s explanation fits too. Personally I am more atheist and think the “purgatory” is more a place created because of exposure to Island’s supernatural properties. I agree with what Higgins said, the island is where the idea of religion has derived from, through out time people have come and left the island with exposure to this unexplainable science and as a result the ideas of religion have evolved from it. That’s my ending, yours may be different and that is OK.